Listing Portals Talk Tech Plans for 2014

Listing Portals Talk Tech Plans for 2014

Daily Real Estate News |
Friday, January 17, 2014

The “big three” in online listing data shared a stage at Inman Connect in New York this week. On Wednesday, executives from realtor.com®, Zillow, and Trulia shared with attendees what they see coming down the tech pike in 2014.

Trulia cofounder and CEO Pete Flint noted that with the housing rebound, more energy and money is being invested in improving the technology and flow of the real estate transaction for both professionals and consumers.

“It’s just an incredibly exciting time in the real estate industry,” Flint told the audience. “We’ll continue to grow… [and work to figure out] how to improve the agent experience and the end-to-end experience.”

But Zillow’s COO warned agents not to wait for technology to advance before they up their game in the creation of quality listing displays.

“We expect technology to change quite a bit more quickly than it actually does,” Greg Schwartz told the crowd. He recommended agents make small improvements on their end, such as uploading listing videos to Zillow or YouTube. “Waiting for a systematic process … releases us from taking responsibility for making the change.”

Errol Samuelson, chief strategy officer at Move Inc., says that the goal for realtor.com® is not to change the way transactions are executed but rather to use data to make them more productive for agents.

“There’s a lot of data that we have, that were collecting with the site, that we’re not using yet,” Samuelson said. He added that the data they are collecting will help in “taking the leads that are generated and making them more intelligent.”

Other technological improvements mentioned in the rapid-fire session:

Flint announced Trulia’s new “seller ads,” which the company will use to funnel listing opportunities to agents; the company officially launched the program Thursday.

Samuelson said Move’s acquisition of lead management system FiveStreet will improve the agent end of realtor.com®, while he expects the addition of listing sources such as new-home communities to bring in more consumers.

Schwartz said Zillow’s partnership with customer relationship management system BoomTown will allow more agents to integrate Zillow in their lead management efforts.